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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29146974">Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterwings/pseuds/waterwings'>waterwings</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Auld Lang Syne, Idiots in Love, M/M, Memory Magic, New Year's Eve, also the Atlantic ocean but only for a moment, and finding their way back, magical mishaps, messing things up</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:47:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,940</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29146974</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterwings/pseuds/waterwings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><b><i>Should old acquaintance be forgot?</i></b><br/>Individuals affected by this tricky spell will lose all memories of one another, with the sole exception being the seconds approaching and following midnight on New Year’s Eve. Victims will be forever drawn to one another, doomed to spend each and every New Year’s Eve together. There is no counter spell. (Rumour has it that the spell can be reversed with a kiss, but this is not common knowledge.) </p>
<p>A love story that no one remembers but is also impossible to forget, told from new year to new year.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Let It Snow Zine</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic was born while listening to the stringy beauty of Ingrid Michaelson's version of Auld Lang Syne, which also happens to be my favourite holiday song. If you want to listen to it, please please do so <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BupvbvvOPTs&amp;ab_channel=IngridMichaelson">here!</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="cambria">
  <p>
    <strong>New Year's Eve: 2016</strong>
  </p>
</div><p>I should never have come.</p>
<p>I don’t know what I expected to happen. Kisses shared beneath an inferno of burning trees, as the pillars of my life went up in flames? (We’d already done that.) Lines crossed in the middle of the night? Reaching, forever reaching for Simon Snow. (I wish we were still doing that.)</p>
<p>But now I’m reaching and I’m not finding purchase.</p>
<p>He left me. </p>
<p>
  <em> (Was there really anything to leave?) </em>
</p>
<p>“Why would you ever wanna be with me?” The boy that the Humdrum and the Mage and all of the magickal world had left behind stood in front of me, twisted into something I barely recognized.</p>
<p>Even if the words hadn’t torn my heart out of my chest and laid it beating on the floor, the tone of voice would’ve done it. Would’ve crushed each chamber under the heel of his shoe.</p>
<p>
  <em> Because you’re everything. You are the sun and I will always be somewhere in your orbit, trapped by the gravitas of your fucking smile, Simon Snow. </em>
</p>
<p>I hadn’t said that.</p>
<p><em> Why would I ever want to be with him? </em> Pride, or shame, or some nasty part of me that had known he would never really love me back, reared its head. “I have no idea.”</p>
<p>He’d stormed out and I’d been left, heart still on the floor, the blood spatter of what could’ve been all over our shared room. He didn’t come back. Not to Watford. Not to me.</p>
<p>And now it’s New Year’s Eve. And I’m standing on the edge of a balcony (at some awful party I knew he would attend), watching Snow drift closer and closer to Wellbelove and farther and farther from me. As the time starts to tick down, Snow’s chin is angling for the kiss he’d always expected to get at the end of this story. A kiss from her and not from me.</p>
<p>I should never have come.</p>
<p>It’s too much. I’m not an impulsive person, but as I watch him take her by the back of her neck (the same way he’d done with me), something inside me breaks. It’s not my heart. That’s still squished and wrong somewhere outside my body.</p>
<p>Some sentimental fool has Auld Lang Syne playing as the New Year rushes in. </p>
<p>
  <em> Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? </em>
</p>
<p>I’ve never understood this song. It longs for the days since passed, drips with melancholy, and yet it is these verses so often chosen to usher us into the optimism of January and the possibility that this year will be different.</p>
<p>
  <em> Should old acquaintance be forgot and days of auld lang syne? </em>
</p>
<p>I know it’s a spell. I’m vaguely familiar with what it will mean.</p>
<p>As I watch his lips connect with hers, I find I don’t care.</p>
<p>As the music swells, with magickal confetti spilling like snow around us, I feel the chorus rushing back to greet me and I echo it in kind.</p>
<p>
  <b> <em>“Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?”</em> </b>
</p>

<p></p><div class="cambria">
  <p>
    <strong>New Year's Eve: 2018</strong>
  </p>
</div><p>The curly-haired monstrosity is back again. It’s the strangest thing (it’s the kind of thing that demands a restraining order). I don’t see him any other day of the year. He just comes crashing into my life on New Year’s Eve. It happens every time, without fail, since…well, since I left Watford.</p>
<p>
  <em> He must be stalking me. There’s no other explanation. </em>
</p>
<p>The truth (the embarrassing, writhing thing that passes for the truth these days) is that I don’t exactly mind. There’s something magnetic about the way he smiles, something that makes my chest ache with want in a way that I’ve never felt before or since.</p>
<p>A spark of…something flares in my chest seeing him <em> here. </em> In a gay bar. <em> Straight people come to gay bars too, </em>I remind myself. Still, I take the win. Cautiously optimistic.</p>
<p>Sweat is dripping down my back and I’ve lost my top three buttons. There’s enough whiskey churning in my blood to set the world on tilt.</p>
<p>I can feel someone touching me, can feel hands and skin and the sweaty crush of dancing bodies.</p>
<p>“Let’s count it down, everyone!” A voice (probably the DJ) bursts through the music, and I can’t help it. I smile.</p>
<p>
  <strong>10</strong>
</p>
<p>The tide of bodies pushes him towards me, or maybe I drift towards him. I’m honestly not sure it matters. We close the distance and are suddenly back-to-back in the middle of a messy dance floor in downtown London.</p>
<p>
  <strong>8</strong>
</p>
<p>Memory is a fickle thing.</p>
<p>It trickles back in, like warmth seeping into cold digits after being outside for too long. I can feel the truth of who he is, hot and warm, pulsing through my veins.</p>
<p>
  <em> Simon Snow. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <strong>5</strong>
</p>
<p>I spelled him from my memory. He is supposed to be gone. He is supposed to be—</p>
<p>“Baz?” There’s something in the way he says my name. Longing? Reverence? He says it much the same way he whispered it into my ear, as we lay moving together in the dark on my four-poster bed all those years ago.</p>
<p>
  <strong>3</strong>
</p>
<p>We’re facing each other now. Those plain eyes latch onto mine. Blue, disappearing into grey, disappearing into…this. His curls are a mess atop a shaved undercut, sticking to his forehead. I want to hit him. I want to lick him. I want—</p>
<p>
  <strong>1</strong>
</p>
<p>“Why can’t I remember you!” He’s shouting. (Or crying?) The tenor of his voice mixes with the bass and the pulse of the dance floor.</p>
<p>
  <strong>HAPPY NEW YEAR!</strong>
</p>
<p>I don’t have the heart to tell him.</p>
<p>Clarity fights against the buzz of the alcohol. The magic of <b> <em>Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot</em> </b> will hold every day of the year. Except for the New Year. Except for those few seconds before and after the threshold of old and new.</p>
<p>We have a few seconds. No more, no less.</p>
<p><em> You didn’t want me, </em> I think and then say it. Out loud, because why not. “Because you didn’t want me.”</p>
<p>He opens his mouth—that gorgeous mouth that traced the stars into my skin—and for a moment, I remember that I want to know what he was going to say.</p>
<p>But the moment passes.</p>
<p>“Who…?” Golden curls looks like he wants to say something. Maybe I’ll finally find out who he is. Why he mysteriously arrives just in time, every year, to count the world down.</p>
<p>But then he turns, and the tide of bodies sweeps him away.</p>
<p>
  <em> Until next year, then. </em>
</p>

<p></p><div class="cambria">
  <p>
    <strong>New Year's Eve: 2020</strong>
  </p>
</div><p>It’s forty minutes to midnight, and golden curls is nowhere in sight.</p>
<p>It’s become a game. Where I try to figure out a place obscure enough that the lovely creature won’t be able to find me. And then am promptly (and secretly) delighted, because he always does.</p>
<p>But there is no way he finds me here.</p>
<p>I’ve decided, for the first time since my seventh year at Watford, to spend New Year’s at home, with my family, at Pitch Manor. And unless goldilocks is willing to break all manner of social convention, he may not arrive at my home unannounced. </p>
<p>I tuck my feet underneath me and sip on a flute of champagne. “You know,” I say around the glass, “tradition usually dictates that we save the bubbly for the countdown. We’re cracking this bottle rather early.” The fireplace laughs at us from across the room, red embers a cheery reminder of the warmth of the holidays. It matches my mood perfectly. </p>
<p>“Shut up, Baz,” Mordelia says, a thick sweep of black eyeliner making her look particularly ferocious. “At least you get to have champagne.”</p>
<p>“You’re twelve years old and six years too young.”</p>
<p>“Oh, stop with the verbal sparring,” father says, struggling to swallow a grin…</p>
<p>and then struggling to breathe…</p>
<p>…and then struggling to sit up.</p>
<p>I watch my father grab his chest, transfixed by the possibility that he could be in any way fallible. “I…” he wheezes, and then collapses, dribbling out of his chair and hitting the floor.</p>
<p>And then everything is a blur. Voices and panic and movement, all at once.</p>
<p>“Oh my god!”</p>
<p>“What's happening?”</p>
<p>“Try a spell—”</p>
<p>“Human ailment.” </p>
<p>“Won’t work—”</p>
<p>“Then call the ambulance!”</p>
<p>“I don’t know how!”</p>
<p>“It’s 999, you idiot!”</p>
<p>Someone calls (I don’t know who. Not me) and an operator tells us to support his head, to lay him flat, to check for pulses and airways and it’s all a blur of panic and the devastating realization that I could lose him.</p>
<p>I hear the sirens careening towards the mansion as they come crashing up the driveway. Most people take one look at that driveway and turn around. I suppose that emergencies demand a different response to the haunted veneer that hangs over the house.</p>
<p>I sprint from the living room to meet them, crashing through the front door in nothing but socks.</p>
<p>White and blue light bathe my world in a filter of panic and soul-freezing fear. I see a shadow jump from the passenger side and another dive out of the driver’s. They’re running toward me, but I still bawl, “HURRY!”</p>
<p>Blue light spins, and then white, and the world is screaming and that’s when I see him.</p>
<p>Gold curls. A chin jutted out, ready to take on the world. Disbelief should be the first emotion that crashes into my senses, but panic has bludgeoned me black and blue. And so it is relief, instead, that wraps me up like a warm blanket.</p>
<p>There is a split second when he sees me, another when he recognizes me, and then another where the disbelief I should be experiencing shines through his square features.</p>
<p>But the man has a job to do. <em> I know what he does now. Paramedic. A fucking hero, rushing to everyone’s rescue. Of course he is. </em></p>
<p>The snow is seeping through the soft fabric of my socks when he reaches me. “Take me to him,” he says, all seriousness and certainty.</p>
<p>And I do.</p>
<p>Somewhere—minutes, hours, a lifetime later—in the back of an ambulance, flying down the motorway, the New Year must come crashing in. </p>
<p>Simon is in the back of the truck, managing the tubes, taking notes, monitoring vitals. I’m holding my father’s hand.</p>
<p>“Will he be alright?” I ask, unable to keep the emotion from my voice. <em> I miss you Simon Snow. Crowley, I miss you so much. </em></p>
<p>Simon shifts off of his seat and kneels before me. “Baz,” he says, taking my other hand between both of his. “He’ll be alright. I promise.”</p>
<p>I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s stupid and sentimental and desperate. But I need him right now. I need my memories and this tiny moment of comfort in the middle of a crisis that my family may not make it out of.</p>
<p>I lean in, just as he stands and pulls me against him. Strong arms wrap me in an embrace that promises things I know he cannot give: he’s holding me like he needs me, like he wants me, like he’ll never let me go.</p>
<p>“Baz,” he says, pressing a kiss into my hair. “Don’t go.”</p>
<p>As the strands of our memories come undone, I feel Simon fade into someone else. </p>
<p>Someone is holding me. Someone I feel intimately close with even when it’s impossible they know me at all. And...and that’s alright for now.</p>

<p></p><div class="cambria">
  <p>
    <strong>New Year's Eve: 2021</strong>
  </p>
</div><p>Ten minutes to midnight.</p>
<p>It was foolishness, really. To think that leaving the country would change anything. I’d started to suspect spellwork after our second run-in.</p>
<p>I think I knew him, that we knew each other. I think he must have meant something to me. I think…he still might.</p>
<p>So much thinking, evidenced in the way my heart starts to pump, manic beats to the strange chorus of our inexplicable annual courtship.</p>
<p>I’m standing atop a hill overlooking a harbour—they called the city St. John’s when we landed. There are boats the size of office buildings hovering atop the inky water, as the waves lap gently against their hulls. I can hear it, the night is that quiet.</p>
<p>I was on my way home, but of course, my flight path was disrupted by the infernal Canadian winter and the storms that ravage their airways. Disrupted by snow.</p>
<p>I’d come up here to get away from the lonely bed of the lonely hotel room on this lonely night. Walked up the hill for a breath of fresh air and the chance of fireworks. My feet found their way.</p>
<p>When I hear footsteps approaching behind me, a part of me knows who it will be. (Knows. Hopes. The difference is both nothing and everything.)</p>
<p>“I can’t believe it.” That voice. I have memories of a half-dozen words, but I feel like there’s so much more. “You’re here.”</p>
<p>I turn, pulling the collar of my black coat up to my throat. The streetlight glances off his golden curls. His shoulders are square and wrapped in the soft grey of a city at night. He strides towards me, and each step feels like the final words of a story.</p>
<p>“I am,” I say, turning back to the harbour.  </p>
<p>“How?” His voice is close. I resist the urge to turn.</p>
<p>“Flight was rerouted. You?”</p>
<p>“Visiting a friend.” He’s shuffling. I can hear the dry snow crunching under his boots. “No idea why Pen would move here of all places. But…” He lets the sentence flounder, and I can almost hear him shrug.</p>
<p>“Hey, I…I know…it’s weird.” He sounds like he has a thousand words that he wants to say and not enough bandwidth on which to project the intent. And so the connection is spotty. “I kinda hoped…I hoped you’d be here? I knew my feet would take me…well they’d take me to you. Cause they always do, one way or another? Tonight.”</p>
<p>
  <em> He hoped he’d find me. </em>
</p>
<p>“Serendipitous. Creepy. It’s all in your perspective, I suppose,” I say to the harbour. Not to him. Because if I turn to face him, if I look into those simple blue eyes, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself from doing something one should never do to a stranger.</p>
<p>“I…well…” I hear him shuffling. Hear him light a match. “I brought sparklers.”</p>
<p>It’s too much. The gravity of this impossible man pulls and I never had a chance. I turn and stare straight into the sun.</p>
<p>White light explodes in front of him, wild and bursting against the dark. </p>
<p>Flashes of a grin, half anxious, half naked excitement. Another flash of a curl so long it’s falling into his eyes. A burst of yellow and a chin, jutted out towards me.</p>
<p>“You brought sparklers?” </p>
<p>He hands the second one to me. “I did.”</p>
<p>“Two of them?”</p>
<p>He laughs, and I feel my knees go weak. “Just in case.”  </p>
<p>The crack of a firework explodes against the quiet and the harbour erupts in colour, the sky reflected on the Atlantic.</p>
<p>“Must be almost New Year’s,” he says, and I feel him shift a little closer.</p>
<p>The ghosts of memory start to dance around us, a slow two-step of the years that we moved with each other, forward and backward, pushing and pulling, but always together. I feel each moment come back to me, making me whole.</p>
<p>“Simon,” I whisper, seeing my breath crystallise in the air between us. </p>
<p>“Wait,” he says, pressing one of his fingers to my lips. Somehow, in the middle of a winter deep freeze, he’s still warm. “We don’t have much time, and I need to say something.”</p>
<p>There’s no DJ counting us down, but we both know that we’re almost out of time.</p>
<p>“You were the best part of my life and I fucked up and I’m so fucking sorry and…and…” The sentence is a wreck, rugged and honest. “I love you.”</p>
<p>“You love...?”</p>
<p>“I always have. I always…I always will. Even if I don’t remember.”</p>
<p>I can feel something unravelling at the back of my mind, a loose thread pulling everything that is good and right undone. Casting off this moment we’ve managed.</p>
<p><em> “No!” </em> I can’t. Not this time. Not ever again.</p>
<p>“What—”</p>
<p>“Shut up,” I say, dropping the sparkler in the snow. I grab him by the collar (<em> whose collar? </em> ), pull his face to mine ( <em> whose face? </em>), and press my mouth to his.</p>
<p>The sky is exploding, all colour and fire and magic, but it is nothing (<b><em>nothing</em></b>) compared to this.</p>
<p>His mouth is cold until it’s not. <em> I reached for him as he hovered over me. </em> I feel his lips part, and suddenly I’m so fucking hungry for him. It’s teeth and tongue and how did I ever forget the way he tastes? <em> He clung to me in the middle of a forest on fire. And I clung to him. </em> I’m clinging to him now, hands shaking as I hold onto his coat, desperate to keep him. To keep him this time. <em> Please let me keep him. </em></p>
<p>The seconds pass, each one a lifetime. On the edge of the world, sparklers wheezing in the snow at our feet, the empty lines of my life are coloured in. And I know that, somehow, this time, he isn’t going anywhere.</p>
<p>Tears are streaming down Simon’s cheeks. He’s realised it too. “I never thought I’d get the chance to make it right.”</p>
<p>I reach up and take his face in my hands (both hands).</p>
<p>He leans into my palm and kisses it.</p>
<p>Old acquaintance, never forgot, and always brought to mind.</p>
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